Rum and Rom-Coms, with Alison Stevenson: ‘It’s a Boy Girl Thing’

Welcome to “Rum and RomComs”. Basically what this is, is I watch a romantic comedy and get drunk while doing so. At the end, I give the film a rating according to how drunk I had to get in order to finish watching it. The higher the number, the worse the movie is.

Tonight, I decided to press play on the 2006 teen romance flick, It’s a Boy Girl Thing, starring Samaire Armstrong and Kevin Zegers. It’s about two teens who live next door to one another, and are total opposites. The boy is a popular jock, the girl is a total geek. One day they find that they’ve switched bodies. Hilarity, clarity, and vulgarity ensues.

Alright I’m sipping on some vodka mixed with this really good tangerine soda stuff from Trader Joe’s and pressing play on this bad boy. The opening credits have this weird stick figure animation, which I highly approve of. Stick figures during opening credits are a lost art that cinema needs to bring back as soon as possible.

Whoa this is fantastic. The first five minutes already has the dude blaring Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” and the girl accidentally losing her top.

These are the kind of movies I love, everything is laid out in the open immediately. The mom of the geek girl gives her daughter a letter from Yale. Then there’s a quick cut to the dad of the jock boy telling his son to get a football scholarship. These characters are established as f*ck.

Okay so jock boy’s name is Woody. He looks like every male cast member of Boy Meets World combined, which is what a 90’s teen hunk should look like. Too bad this was made in 2006.

The movie goes on to establish that these two neighbors hate each other. Woody’s best friend, a buff black guy named Horse (seriously that’s his name), picks Woody up from school in his red convertible. They drive fast over a puddle and splash Nell (the geek girl) with gross street water as a sweet Eminem track blares in the background. At school, Nell talks a bunch of smack on Woody’s girlfriend telling her she’s going to be fat one day, and Woody retaliates by putting gay porn on Nell’s computer. These two are such enemies! Now it’s time for a school field trip. This is all happening on the same school day by the way.

Okay I’ve already finished my first vodka drink. On to a Bloody Mary. I think I didn’t put enough vodka in my Bloody Mary so I’ll just take a shot real quick. Is that sad? To take a shot of vodka all by yourself? I think alone-drinking requires sippage. That’s what makes it classy and respectable. An alone shot feels like I’m just pre-gaming for the 4 hours of Cheers I’m going to watch after this. Oh well.

Back to the movie. So now they’re at this museum and are forced to be partners because duh. They fight one another right in front of a statue which depicts an ancient Aztec god of sorcery named Texicalipolka? I have no idea how to spell it. Their teacher calls him a “powerful SOB”. So as they argue Nell tells Woody he has “retard germs”, and Woody diagnoses Nell with “pencil-necked virgin disease”. This movie rules.

So I guess the Aztec god was hearing all this and thought to himself, Man these two are destined to be together. Now let me do my Aztec magic even though I am just a giant carved stone meant to symbolize a God more than actually be one. Freaky brown magic dust that looks like fart then comes out of him (that they can’t see for some reason). They go to bed that night thinking everything is normal. They don’t what we know! Nell reads Shakespeare to herself while Woody dances to “Baby Got Back”. Sidenote: I don’t understand how this guy sings “Baby Got Back” to himself before going to bed, yet still manages to have a black best friend.

They wake up the next morning, and bam! A classic switcheroo (industry term) just happened.

Woody wakes up and immediately says “tits” then freaks out that his dick is gone. Nell wakes up with a raging boner, which is actually pretty hilarious. I don’t know if it’s the vodka talking but she’s trying to bat away the boner with a spatula and I’m laughing pretty hard. You know what, you can only see the shadow, but that dude’s dick is pretty big. Now I’m trying not to masturbate to this movie.

Horse just pulled up in his red convertible again. He yells at Woody (who is actually Nell) to get into the car, and says “We got people to see. Women to impregnate.” Man, it is really hard for me not to masturbate while watching this.

Alright I’m on my third drink. I decided to just sip on some whiskey in a glass with ice to feel more like I’m a character in Mad Men.

So there’s a lot of predictable playing on gender stereotypes. Nell is all like Ugh I have to pee with a penis this is so gross, and then she’s like, I’m a girl supposed to know how to play football in this dude’s body? No way! I’m suddenly realizing that I don’t think I have ever spoken to a football coach. That’s a really dumb thing no one cares about, but I think it’s a good realization for me to have.

Okay I need to pause and reflect on something real quick. So these two just went to school as each other and are not freaking out enough about what just happened to them. If this shit happened to me I would immediately want to know how this happened. They barely question it, they go right into living as one another. I would be crying, or at least having some sort of a panic attack. I’d Google the crap out of this until I knew what was going on. Alright, back to the movie.

Wow there’s an entire auto shop in this school with like at least eight cars in it what the hell kind of public school is this? Are they in Canada?

So a few more days have gone by and they are now at war with one another, in the other person’s body. Nell makes Woody dress preppy so he makes her dress “slutty”. Nell then dumps Woody’s girlfriend. Woody is super pissed, and oh my god what? He wants to retaliate by telling her that he is going to make her lose her virginity. Now he’s hopping onto the motorcycle of the baddest dude in their high school (who just happened to be there waiting I guess). What the f*ck? This is basically rape right? Holy shit now he’s at this guy’s mobile home and is suddenly realizing, whoa if I have sex with this dude, it’ll be totally gay. So he runs off. I am tripping balls over how weird and offensive this is. I need another drink.

Well, even though super-straight-totally-not-gay Woody ran away, it turns out Nicki–the bad boy trailer park greaseball–told the whole school they had sex anyways. Nell, in Woody’s body, is crying at the stairs of the school. A teacher walks up, thinking it’s Woody crying, and asks what’s wrong. She shouts, “I just found out I lost my virginity at a trailer park.” As if losing your virginity at a trailer park is a horrible thing. Better than at your twentieth birthday party to a guy who goes to raves and wears newsboy caps, Nell! Trust me.

Some bullies wrote “SLUT STUFF” on her locker and all I can think is that this would make an awesome tattoo.

The two dipshits are finally trying to figure out why they are in each other’s bodies. Oh duh, it’s that Texicalipolka Aztec stone god. Good teamwork, idiots. What I’m wondering is why does some Aztec god give a shit about two dumb white teenagers in a yuppy suburban town?

Anyways, so now there’s a montage of them bonding through teaching one another what they’re all about. Nell has to learn to play football in Woody’s body so he can win the homecoming game and get a college scholarship. Woody has to study a lot and do well on a Yale interview so Nell can officially be accepted. I’m going to skip this and make myself another Bloody Mary. It’s probably a bad idea. Chances are I am going to puke.

I don’t understand how this movie expects us to believe that if this guy doesn’t get a football scholarship he has no other college options. Why don’t these movies ever promote community colleges? Sure, you can work with your dad at Spatula World, but it can be part-time while getting your associates degree. Then you can transfer and play at Notre Dame, or some other football-obsessed school that I know nothing about.

Woody’s mom sounds exactly like Sharon Osbourne.

Okay so I’m going from sipping to chugging on my Bloody Mary. My dad just Facebook chatted me and asked if I’m doing okay. I don’t want to tell him the truth, so I lied and said everything is going great.

More boob and dick humor, as well as a subplot about Horse cheating on his girlfriend all the time. Nell gets a Brazilian wax. The football game goes great. They win the big game. Woody, as Nell, nails the interview. The two embrace one another, and in doing so their bodies switch back to normal. Fast forward a couple of scenes, Nell shows up to the homecoming dance looking beautiful. The whole school stops everything they’re doing to witness her mind-blowing entrance into a high school auditorium.

Woody is now officially in love with her. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a slow walk like that? They kiss, and presumably will continue to have an amazing relationship all throughout college, even though they are going to separate schools and Woody is a womanizing jock. The end!

Now the credits are rolling, and I see that Woody’s mom was played by Sharon Osbourne. Holy crap, that looked nothing like her! Oh not only that, but I’m also seeing that this movie was produced by Elton John. Damn Elton, why did you produce this movie? Alright I’m now looking at Elton John’s producer credits on IMDB. Dude produced Gnomeo & Juliet. Is it possible for someone to be so talented at one art that they’re complete idiots at another?

Okay, so let’s sum up what I drank: vodka with soda, Bloody Mary, shot of vodka, whiskey on ice, a little bit more whiskey, and then another Bloody Mary. I can’t feel my face. I am going to give this movie, on the drunk scale, an 8/10. I just had to keep drinking in order to watch the last thirty minutes. It really loses it’s tacky charm in the homestretch. Just like me! Goodnight.

I went to the IMDb page and sure enough there is someone there complaining that it was all filmed in Canada with a mostly Canadian cast, and yet the movie is not set in Canada. So the answer is yes, they are in Canada.

I think he meant that he has no idea about what it means to watch a complete movie from start to finish and not masturbate. I guess he doesn’t go to movie theaters. People keep hushing and try to avoid eye contact and it makes it hard to cum, so sometimes I don’t know why I even bother.

Well, I have to think about this. I probably shouldn’t reveal much about who I am or what I did on the film. I don’t work with any of those people now, not directly anyway, but I’m still in the industry.

Most of the stories would probably be boring to you guys. And some of the stories work much better orally – like the dirty, dirty, dirty conversation I had with the MPAA.

It was shot mostly in Canada – Toronto and the surrounding area, but they also did about a week in England. The cast was a decent group of people. I was not surprised at all to hear Samaire ended up in rehab the following year or so. She was quite nice, but had a breakdown on set and apparently passed out another time. Never really figured out what that smell was in her trailer, but I think I got high off the fumes. Really nice girl though. Mpho Koaho (Horse) was odd. I think his real name is George (or something like that), but he had this overcompensating, womanizing, aggressive personality that’s clear a put-on and only served to piss off everyone. Kevin Zegers was… I dunno. Boring? I couldn’t engage that guy in a conversation to save my life.

The director was obsessed with putting in as many dirty little jokes as he could manage. He loved all that stuff. Woody, Horse (as in “hung like a…”), Westdale Beavers, etc. Even that name of the high school – Westdale – was something we brainstormed about for a while. He wanted to be able to frame a shot where actors would block out part of the letters to spell something dirty. After running by a ridiculous number of suggestions by him, the producers and the clearance company, we settled on Westdale. Get it? It says STD in the middle. Yep, that was a whole day of my life, coming up with that one. Personally, I liked Sherpes High.

Apparently it did fairly well when it released in the UK, but it got absolutely buried here in Canada. They played it on one screen for one week and didn’t even bother to tell the producers when it happened.

There’s lots more, but all I’d do is fill up comment space. I’ve worked on a lot of projects over the years but this one may have been the most fun, to be honest.

I forgot to mention one of the other fascinating things. They were obliged to deliver a PG-13 movie to the distributors, but the script was a hard R and that’s how they were planning to shoot it. That’s why the girls’ shower scene has so much digital steam in it. They were obsessed with having full frontal nudity and had no intention of shooting it otherwise. That was kind of the whole attitude behind the film. It was my job to find out from the MPAA as to what was acceptable for PG-13 (hence the dirty, dirty call) although I don’t know how much they paid attention to what I had to say.

Was she Dave Navarro’s smack-addicted girlfriend? I remember thinking while Juice smothered the life out of her, “Gee, she seems like a nice actress, too bad she couldn’t get a role in a body-switching direct-to-video romantic comedy.”